[talk-au] Path versus Footway

[Josh Marshall]

My 2¢ here, as both an avid runner/hiker and bike rider (in NSW). Most of my editing is along those lines, along with tracks through the bush when I go exploring. I’m particularly conscious of routing issues and fixing them if there’s an issue†, given I use a number of route planners that use OSM††.

The following is how I have been tagging with new ways. I don’t change existing ones unless there’s a good reason.

I have understood highway=footway as paths that are an alternative to a road that runs parallel, and are only for use by pedestrians for their safety and comfort. 

My stance here was most likely due to my initial exposure via iD’s "Foot Path”* so I associated them with the common definition. And footway is by default bicycles=undesignated, which suits Australia well with our differing laws on bicycles allowed on footpaths.^

Whereas once they diverge from being the "pedestrian lane” of roads and become a separate access route in their own right, I have been tagging as highway=path. Particularly as these are default access to all traffic except vehicular, and specifically bicycle=yes.

(highway=cycleway is also a little tricky in its overlap with =path. At least around me, it seems the major shared paths that form commuting links are tagged cycleway and foot=yes, so I’ve been happy to roll with that approach.)

Cheers,
Josh


Footnotes:
† A big one recently was the M1 on/off-ramps for both exits at Karuah, north of Newcastle… they all had bicycles=no, and the routing to get around that was so bad I had to fix it as 

†† Strava, Komoot, and the fabulous indie mobile app Footpath (nothing better for planning and quickly checking a route, imho) all had the same error with the Karuah ramps, so I knew the problem was with the underlying OSM tagging.

* Not quite as controversial as the highway=track drama, as far as I can tell.

^ I’m in NSW where it’s not legal for age>16 riders to go on the footpath… but there are some footpaths that are very short sections that add better bicycle connectivity, and would only ever be used by casual and commuting cyclists. For these I have added bicycle=yes to the footpath. Example: https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1026269344 Use case: my newly high-schooling son riding to school.


> On 2 Feb 2022, at 11:24 pm, osm.talk-au at thorsten.engler.id.au wrote:
> 
> 
> I rarely map things that aren’t urban footpaths.
>  
> So generally footway or cycleway. As I’m generally mapping in Queensland, where there isn’t much if any legal distinction between general footpath and a signed “shared path”, I’m using footway or cycleway depending on how cycle friendly (wide enough, no low hanging branches, smooth enough surface, …) I find the way, simply to get them to render differently in Carto, though the legal access restrictions for routing purposes are identical.
>  
> In the rare cases where I did map paths “in the woods”, I’ve usually used path (or track, depending…).
>  
> Cheers,
> Thorsten
>  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-au/attachments/20220203/0b634fd5/attachment-0001.htm>